Why F1 cars are SLOWER than Supercars? Engineer Explains! 

I'm a graduate engineer, with some FS experience and a massive F1 fan. I have been watching your channel since the beggining and I want to offer you massive congratulations for the fine balance between simple explanations and deep dives you make, Blake, you are awesome man, keep it up!

That external combustion engine joke caught me off guard lmao

I’m a dancer with a Mechanical Engineering degree who’s been following Formula 1 for about three years now and i must say, your videos are beautifully done! It’s refreshing to hear someone with actual engineering knowledge breaking down the beauty of math and physics in F1! Reminds me of how much of a nerd I am and why I love motor sport! Bravo sir! Bravo👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

You are the F1 Mark Rober and I hope you will soon be enjoying the same level of success! Thank you for the great content!

Great. The final part tells why an f1 car can be driven only by people that are well prepared physically

That external combustion engine joke had me finished. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

As someone who works in the Automotive industry as an engineer, I could not think of an easier way to explain those concepts than you did in the video. Also, your insights on the external combustion engines developed by ferrari is amazing.

How about a "what if" video of if F1 had a drag race at the end of every season, where they removed all regulations and let teams go absolutely berserk. Some questions: 1. What sort of regulations are hindering the ability to max out a car's straight line speed? 2. Which generation of f1 car is the best to try a top speed record on? 3. Which team's chassis/aero design/ power unit is already best equipped for the job? Thanks! This video made me sub today!

Been on F1 yt for a long time now. I already had a very good understanding of these concepts, yet still this video got me hooked. I think I've never seen anyone explain this subject so well. Great video

Gears? Enter the CVT… oh, it was so good they banned it…

Lol we should know the answer to that already, but let’s hear what u gotta say Blake

agree with that ending, I feel waaaaaaaaaaay more smarter watching this video HAHAHA. Another great one Blake, makes me wanna re-visit my undergrad thesis. I remember it took me quite a while to write the "background" part on how aerodynamics in race car works. Wish this video was uploaded 2 years ago, not an hour ago 😂😂😂

Excellent video Blake. One of your best. Informative, concise and easy-to-understand. Good job homie!

We’re getting to technical terms where people mostly don’t care about. It’s hard to prove because not everyone can comprehend everything. But once you try to understand it will all make sense.

4:50 ...And rarely exceeds 12000 RPM... Fun fact: If you mention this anywhere near guys, who remember V10 sound from 2000s, resulting outcry would very much be louder than actual current gen car engine roar... Or whimper

"Ferrari were rumoured to be working on an EXTERNAL combustion engine this season" hahaha oh god.

It should maybe also be mentioned that while the power of the ICU + ERS might be 1,000hp in total, typically the ERS will be deployed at the beginning of a straight, and will not be available at the end anymore (you need a braking zone to charge up again). So the available power at the end of a straight will be more like 800+hp. So, even if you have an infinte straight, the terminal velocity will be determined by the ICE alone. Also, higher rpm will not yield significantly more power anymore beyond a certain limit, because fuel mass flow is limited by the regulations at 100kg/h.

Maybe faster in a straight line, until breaking and cornering is inserted in the equation. Thats where the F1 car really shines.

IndyCar teams spend a month in may preparing for the Indy 500 and trimming the car out to about half the drag of a the street and road circuits . Some of the teams have specialists who go over every surface smoothing , adjusting , covering every gap and join to make the cars as slippery as possible . The result is almost 400km top speeds with only 6-700hp of power , 1/3 less than f1 car and in a bigger , heavier and less sophisticated car. But the f1 car is much faster around a road/street circuit as drag and downforce gets added back on . its all about design choices and goals

That's surprising that Mexico is where everyone hits the highest top speed, but then you factor in the lower air density and the track layout basically mirroring Monza then it does make sense, everything else made sense to me already having watched the top gear Bugatti special which also stated that drag is the biggest hurdle to going past ~350kph, like logically, all that downforce that pushes a car down in corners don't just disappear along the straights

f1 cars are slower on the straights simply because its purpose isn't for straights and is for corners. f1 cars create downforce using flaps and wings causing there to be more drag which makes it lose downforce. cars like Bugatti's have less drag because these manufactures are trying to make a fast car on a straight. without the flaps and wings the cars have less which makes them faster on a straight.

Layman: F1 are designed to Drive around Racing circuits as quickly as possible rather than straight line top speed. Engineers/Physicists: Aero Dynamic, drag, downforce, Faster at corner>straight line speed, compromises, e=mc²!

Hypercar.

F1 cars are RACE cars, meant to be put through corners at its limit, not like the Bugatti.

I'd loved too see all the equations in one frame so you can follow allong and pause to understand it. Otherwise very nice video. I came into f1 because I was interested in the physics of cars and racing. Love this kind of content.

I would feel very unsafe in a supercar going so fast with so little downforce.

Great one blake. I think you could have gone deeper on air density and the extra effect that has on everything from drag to cooling. Or even how engineers look at air as less dense water. Did not know the teams were locked in with gear ratios for the season. I know the rules say 8 fwd gears and no overdrive gears. How close to 1:1 will they go for 8th gear?

Meanwhile, Andrew Tate thinks he can outlap F1 cars in his Bugatti

Cause they are designed not for top speed, but for being fast AROUND circuits. Another whole concept. Now ima watch the video

F1 cars are shower at top speed, but at the time/lap ar in another league

My uncle has been a mechanic for 40+ years and has served as a Crew Chief at a grassroots motorsport level for multiple years. In this time he worked at an aftermarket performance tuner and would always follow up the statement from customers "I want to go fast!" with the question "Okay, how do you want to go fast?" to many a quizzical expressions. Fast comes in so many different shapes and sizes that all you need to do is look at all the vastly different motorsports disciplines across the globe to just begin to have an understanding. Defining fast is a tremendously tricky question to answer and one must narrow it down to "fast how" before one can make a full package to accomplish that task. The only misconception that I would say I failed on is the #6, Honestly never gave much thought about how much of an affect drag would have on an F1 car at relative Top Speed and how strong it really is. Guess I should have taken into consideration how many G's Fighter Aircraft generate since I can't imagine a modern F1 car is not too far off of a fighter jet pulling on the joystick at max tilt.

Took a glance at the title and thought to myself, "I wont learn anything, its just another f1 content creator youtube video" Then I noticed it was Brrrake and completely rethought my previous impression. Thanks for the quality content man, so much more informative than 85% of the content creators right now.

I have enjoyed it and thank you for making it

Honestly, if you just want to see a car go as fast as humanly possible, just watch NHRA Top Fuel, because those cars do 320 mph with ease, but it's a straight line to 1,000 feet Edit: and this video could be applied to any form of motorsport in terms of explaining aerodynamics

F1 cars could go faster, of course! But really, this video could simply be summed up as.... F1 cars are built to go fast around an entire lap and balance speed against grip, load and g forces. The top and low speed graph should have been caveated with this reflects the differing course types and, again, the aerodynamic packages applied for each. Also, F1 cars do have many reg applied, and there's also no refueling! Gone are the days of "splash and dash". Btw, nice to be reminded we don't hear the old phrase "hitting the rev limiter" when back in the days we might be watching a team getting it wrong come race day.

Mech E isn’t my wheelhouse, but I always appreciate watching other engineers slay in their circuit!

In a nutshell, Aerodynamics push down the car and slows it down but a Bugatti doesn’t have as much downforce and therefore goes faster. Thank me later.

Quite a number of the changes in regulations in F1 are actually done to slow down the cars. F1 has top engineers and if F1 wants the cars to go extremely fast, I am sure they can do it.

Bugatti engineers said a couple things that are noteworthy. The first was that the Chiron weighs over 4000 lbs because it has to be a stable platform at +250 mph. They said a car at those speeds wants to fly so badly that any undulation or bump that upsets the car relationship to the road would launch it into the air. Instead of using permanent huge wings to keep the car planted, they engineers used weight with a smaller wing. They also said that after a certain speed, the factor of air resistance is a inverse square to velocity and the car requires a lot of HP just to go slightly faster. They said that tires were a factor in building a car that can reliably go over 250 MPH since the RPM of the tires cause so much stress that they can fly apart... yet alone the friction caused by the high speeds affecting wear and handling. It took Michelin a while to come up with tires that could handle the speeds and be street legal at the same time. Lastly, the transmission was the potential limiting mechanical factor in the Chiron and it took a lot of engineering to get a transmission strong enough to handle the torque and horsepower of the car.

Seeing Drag equation triggered my Aersoapce Engineering degree PTSD. Great video as always Blake

Put a Bugatti on a road course with an f1 car. That Bugatti top speed becomes less impressive really quick

A most excellent video. As an aero engineer who built commercial airlines for a living, this video explains the complexities of engineering a vehicle to go fast on a multitude of racing circuits very, very well. I would love to see your analysis of car performance at all the F1 racing circuits, and the compromises that the FIA Formula 1 rules and restrictions induce in the designs of the ten cars. Buy the way, I concur with all six of your conclusions that debunk the common myths about F1 cars when compared to super- or hyper-cars. Perhaps an even better analysis of race car performance can be realized by comparing F1 cars to sports prototype cars such as Le Mans or Daytona.

😭😭 mate I'm an unemployed automotive masters graduate as well and my final project was to calculate drag coefficient of the Tesla Cybertruck. This vid is so relatable 🙋🏻🤍

The level of information and data he gave was amazing!!! Never thought learning mathematics can be more fun!! 😂💖💖

An F1 car goes between 25 and 35 mili to build. Most from the 2000s for now tho goes between 3 to 20 million

The segment in gearing was what confused me tbh, ty for bringing light on that Btw I feel happy that my comment partly inspired this video 😊

I really thought F1 used to go up to 410km/h but apparently no.

Well of those 20 million dollars for the f1 car is 10 million for just the engine

The Honda at bonneville was actually built to regulation and theoretically could’ve entered a Grand Prix and been legal

I think I have wtChed this video three times now.. this is the coolest thing I have ever learned

Keep up the great work Blake!

External combustion engine 🤣🤣🤣😭😭😭

Because they don't need to turn.

F1 is not about straight line,its about corners

put buggati in a racing circuit with an f1 it will eat dust😆😆😆

What happen when F1 drive in mexico circuit, but using monza spec car? Will it reach 400kph?

Just a quick correction : the aero drag increases in a polynomial way, not exponentially. Also, I love your videos !

I'm a driving instructor, also huge F1 nerd. I use the "1G" braking fact all the time when I'm teaching emergency stops. Afterwards, to try and get people to perform the stop better, I quite often joke about being "able to stop quicker if I just took my foot off the accelerator!"

compare it with the old F1 cars the V10's era

put a 2004 late ferrary with slicks

Your content is always fascinating.

Love the video! Always so informational. The white board moving with the writing was a bit annoying, all I saw was words slightly shaking.

Couldn't help but point out that drag force doesn't increase exponentially with velocity. It's polynomial. Exponential would be something like 2^v

Guess all at sim racing paid off, zero misconceptions about F1 cars being slower than supercars. SimRacing did solve my misconception about super cars being cool as well, so fucking slow in the corners. You might call them super slow pokes with ADHS. Well, with a few exceptions, mainly Mclarens with ton of downforce. But those are mainly Hypercars and work as race cars just fine. ;-)

Ahh 💀 While showing the altitude difference you made Mexico city circuit at 2400 km 💀 bro Is the circuit in space ? 🙂 Jk amazing video ✨️

Let me keep this short for you folks. F1 COST MORE BECAUSE IN A TRACK IT WOULD RUN CIRCLES AROUND A ROAD CAR. There, it took me 15 seconds.

Why F1 slower? Because of Drag and reduction of downforce. Let's make it simple, the lighter the vehicle, the lesser the downforce and the greater the drag. F1 cars are literally have faster acceleration than most electric car, Generally speaking, when it comes on "TOP SPEED" they are goners to Bugatti, because of as fast as they go, the slower they get. Quite an opposite of that Bugatti. Bugatti tends to be faster when it runs longer

Hmm I don't know man... I'm not sure 1g at the end of the straight is correct, as f1 engineers constantly keep talking about how f1 cars produce 2g of downforce just by drivers lifting the gas pedal nearing the end of the straight.

For those who don't know the FIA basically limits how much the engine can rev at average and max, so YES, if they give the chance, an F1 car could actually rev into 19k rpm and go berzerk

A modded Ford GT with only a turbo V8 has just done 500kmh. Street legal hypercars are just items created to flaunt wealth, nothing else.

Thanks for making me gooder smarter ❤

You really contradict yourself when you say the relation between speed and aero drag is squared, then you say drag increases exponentially. Never ever call anything squared exponential, it’s totally different

also to add up the reason why the teams cannot rev the engine up to 15k rpm, cause of the fuel limit flow. which sucks cause the rule makers knew about it. so dumb.

Got all of it correct. Make sense since I'm PROBABLY a PhD ;)))

No my ricer friends still think speed is only matter in straight lines…light cars is useless!! spoilers is just for looks!! the more the stickers the more horsepower the car will have!! the louder the exhaust the faster the car can go🤣🤣

Mexico has less wind resistance…

this cars made for tracks not for drag racing lets put chiron into monaco gp and let see lap times F1 cars not the fastest cars in the world quickest cars in the world this is different things nice vid btw

1:57 how far did he say literally?!

I'm an aerospace engineering and everything in this video is true (I'm lying)

Did..did you just dispel common misconceptions with actual data and math? 🤯

Well explained! You really should have added a quick sentence explaining WHY they want all this induced drag. That would be to allow more power to be applied to the tires without them losing grip for faster acceleration, as well as to allow faster corner speeds, also due to the tires being forced down onto the surface.

No one....... Nooooooooooo oooooooooneeee believes F1 aerodynamics increase top speed.... Nooooooo one.

Because of the FIA rules Supercars don't need the FIA rules

Get one round an f1 track and then come back and tell me what's quicker.

supercars or even hypercars dont have the same G speed in corners like F1 cars. so top speed doesnt matter.

Drag.

I can answer this in 3 seconds DOWNFORCE

who else googled ferrari external combustion engine 🤣

You earned my subscribe at precisely 0:51 into the vid

F1 is pretty slow BS . . .

The fact that you have to explain this, makes me lose faith in humanity

for anyone that knows basics f1 is not slower... if you decrease drag by eliminating EVERYTHING that is designed to make the car turn and not fly... adjust the gearbox... put bigger tyres/rims the F1 car will (read the word)... A L W A Y S be faster... BECAUSE SIMPLY.... if both cars have the same air drag cooeficiency (forgive me if i say things wrong but i m sure people with english as native language will understand me)... The f1 car revs significantly higher than a normal car. and trust me if an F1 car wants to hit high top speeds it can exceed 500kph. we ve seen them hit almost 380 (ON TRACK) ... There are more i could go in severe depth on but i think i m making my point...

Simple answer to why f1 cars are slower than super cars is because of a lot of d o w n f o r c e

Because their engines are 10x more efficient than the Chiron.

Top speed doesnt mean everything in race track. Even if Bugatti run at 500MPH top speed, it will still never catch up a Formula 1 car. Formula cars are designed to run the fastest lap time on race track, race track is NOT a 10 KM straightline,it has corners, lots of corners.Bugatti will never have the same level of downforce as Formula 1 cars. That means its corner speed gonna be smoke by any Formula car from the past 30 years. We're comparing street legal car VS professional race car. What do you expect?lmao

I didnt get the calculations but thanks for explaining that f1 cars arnt aerodynamic sleek and designed for downforce

You really don't need 15 minuts to explan this 😅

That Ferrari dig though

Okay, I’m right at the “misconceptions” introduction and have to say before I hit play again, I can’t believe people on the internet think it’s a good idea to “actually..” a former F1 engineer. SMH. I’m an electrical engineer and love all of the engineering that goes into F1.

I randomly ended up here and i love the knowledge you gave through this video. I don't usually comment, but great video!